Inadequate supply of personal protective equipment, vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics during the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa created an opportunity to promote local manufacturing.

South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Senegal are currently involved in local vaccine production that meets approximately 1% of the total continental vaccine demand and should rank topmost in capacity-building for increased production.

Four concepts—cooperation, collaboration, coordination, and communication—are underlined in the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention's strategy to promote the procurement of large supplies of diagnostics, therapeutics, and other essential supplies.

By investing in existing manufacturers, challenges in market access can be overcome. Local manufacturers in South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Senegal are able to sell to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance-supported countries and can achieve volume certainty at scale.

Beyond manufacturing facilities, specialized financing is needed to improve larger enablers such as expertise for manufacturing plants and research institutions, legal frameworks for vaccine approval, and research and development, particularly for novel vaccines.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) is an autonomous body of the African Union (AU) established to support public health initiatives of member states.1 It aims to strengthen the capacity of Africa's public health institutions to detect, prevent, control, and respond quickly and effectively to disease threats.1–3 To promote pandemic preparedness and outbreak response, Africa CDC, its partners, and member states have collaborated on noteworthy steps to support local manufacturing of vaccines, personal protective equipment (PPE), diagnostics, and therapeutics in Africa.3–5 These goals are central to the mission of the New Public Health Order, a roadmap that strives to strengthen the resilience of health systems across the region.6 In this commentary, we describe the collaborations between Africa CDC, member states, and partners in boosting the production of PPE, vaccines, …